Ohio should
become the nation’s 24th “right-to-work state,” voters in a new poll
declare.

By a
14-point margin – 50 percent to 36 percent – participants in the
Quinnipiac
Poll say the Buckeye State should join Indiana in making it more
difficult to
mandate union membership. The poll comes less than four months after
Ohio
voters crushed Senate Bill 5 by 23 points in a referendum on slashing
public
employee union rights.

“Given the
assumption that the SB 5 referendum was a demonstration of union
strength in
Ohio, the 54 – 40 percent support for making Ohio a ‘right-to-work’
state does
make one take notice,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the
Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, in a statement.

“In the SB
5 referendum independent voters, who are generally the key to Ohio
elections,
voted with the pro-union folks to repeal the law many viewed as an
effort to
handicap unions. The data indicates that many of those same
independents who
stood up for unions this past November on SB 5 are standing up to
unions by
backing ‘right-to-work’ legislation.”

The concept
draws favor from independents 55 percent to 39 percent. Republicans
back “
right-to-work” by 77 percent to 20 percent, while Democrats are opposed
61
percent to 31 percent.

Respondents
were asked: “Indiana recently became a ‘right-to-work’ state, meaning
that
workers can no longer be required to join a union or pay dues or fees
to a
union as a condition of employment. Do you think that Ohio should
become a
‘right-to-work’ state or don’t you think so?”

The poll
shows that Ohioans also favor raising the speed limit on interstates to
70 mph
and back a bill that would ban smoking inside a car when a child 6 or
younger
is present.

“When a
governor’s approval rating in his own party can’t overcome the
disapproval by
the opposition party and he is getting bad reviews from independent
voters, it
is a sign of political weakness,” said Brown. “The governor still has
almost
three years until he faces the voters, but he would certainly like to
get his
job approval into the mid-40s, at least. The good news for him is that
he is
slightly more popular than the legislature, which gets 48 – 35 percent
disapproval.”

The
telephone poll, which includes land and cell lines, from February 7
through
Sunday of 1,421 registered Ohio voters has a margin of sampling error
of plus
or minus 2.6 percentage points.